


Respiration

by JackyM



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Obligatory Fuck David Cage Tag, Sumo has his own tag as a character and that JUST means the world to me...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 16:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20195614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyM/pseuds/JackyM
Summary: Connor could feel empathy.He just wasn't sure how empathetic he was.





	Respiration

**Author's Note:**

> So. D:BH isn't a good game, and I hate David Cage, but...
> 
> Connor is so good! 
> 
> Sumo is so good! 
> 
> Autistic Connor is so good! 
> 
> Hank being a dad is so good! 
> 
> Found family dynamics are so good! 
> 
> Let me know how characterization and such is! This is my first time writing both of these characters, so...fhbghgb. ;w;  


Empathy.

_ Empathy. _

_ em·pa·thy_

_ /ˈempəTHē/ _

_ Noun _

_ The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. _

Empathy was a human emotion. 

Connor knew it was a human emotion. 

He also knew that he felt it. Because Hank insisted that he felt it, and because Connor felt with a living electric stirring that he could see life in humans, in animals, in other androids. That he knew they were also alive, and felt the same pain and excitement of being alive that he did. And yet...there was no way, he thought, that he was in any way _ empathetic _. 

Before wholly embracing his existence as a deviant, he’d suspected that his lack of shared emotions with others had been a core part of his programming. Likely put into place to avoid him from becoming biased, and more essentially, from becoming deviant. The distraught mother, on his first case, teary-eyed and shaking because of her daughter in immediate peril...he knew _ what _ she was feeling. She was feeling scared, betrayed, overwhelmed. But none of those feelings were ones he felt himself. But he did not share those feelings. He only observed them. Distanced himself from them. Felt nothing in response to her deluge of strong emotions hitting him at the same time, starting, slowly, to overwhelm him. 

He was lucky, in one of the most ironically unfortunate ways to be lucky, that the woman was gently escorted away while she asked, over and over, _ why they didn’t send a real person, why were they letting that _ thing _ handle something this serious? _

What had that comment been in reference to?

At the time, he had assumed it was the coruscant blue of the Cyberlife triangle on his breast and band around his arm. 

Now, he wondered if his behavior had given it away. If that look downwards had just been an affirmation of what she already had assumed. The way he only looked at her, unblinking, unfeeling, as she held his arms and tearfully asked for his help...she must’ve suspected. People who were...empathetic...behaved differently. They tried to calm people down. Spoke to them in hushed tones. Told them that everything that could be done would get done, and that they’d do anything to help, that _ everything was going to be okay _ . It all came out so naturally. It never sounded forced, _ robotic._

He knew now that none of that was his programming. 

It was just him. 

He couldn’t comfort people with the reflexive ease other androids and humans had. He’d observed the types of behaviors that usually accompany comforting distressed people. The likelihood of them being successful comforting methods was high. But he didn’t want to mimic those behaviors. Something about it felt strange, though he had difficulty parsing what about it was so outlandish to him. Perhaps it was just the simple fact that he knew, he _ knew _ , that he was not feeling the same emotions as the people who he was trying to comfort. It would seem forced, because it _ was _ forced. 

Connor sighed, shakily. 

A strange sensation. 

He didn’t need to breathe. 

But he was breathing. 

Shakily. 

_ Empathy. _

_ em·pa·thy_

_ /ˈempəTHē/ _

_ Noun _

_ The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. _

Empathetic was just the adjective of the noun empathy.

He felt empathy.

He knew he did. 

He could understand feelings. 

He could share them insofar that he could talk about them. He could say he felt the way someone else felt once. 

Wasn’t that what empathy was?

He exhaled, only now realizing he hadn’t been breathing, only now realizing he _had to_ _breathe, he was going to die if he didn’t breathe_.

He’d spent at least three hours and seventeen minutes pacing anxiously in Lieutenant--no, _ Hank’s _ \--living room in the early hours of the morning. During his nightly rest mode, which Hank _ insisted _ he perform every night (“wasn’t it fuckin’ analogous to sleep?”) he saw it, over and over again, the faces of people who were overcome with emotion and noticed that he himself _ didn’t seem to care _. Maybe his LED gave away his stress, openly showing how overwhelmed he felt when faced with such an overload of external sensory input. But he knew his facial expression never showed anything, besides blank recognition of a feeling being expression, LED blinking red and yellow. And he knew what that meant, to humans, and androids. 

It meant he was unempathetic. 

And if he was unempathetic, how alive was he, really?

How much did empathy matter if he wasn’t _ empathetic _?

Connor took a steadying breath. Another breath he needed, and didn’t know he needed. 

But he needed it _ to live, to stay alive _. 

He sat down on the couch. 

And then he pulled this legs up and laid down. Sensing the change in his movement, Sumo got up and stretched, and jumped up on the couch with Connor, circling around Connor’s torso before lying down on top of him. He was heavy, well over 200 pounds. To be exact, 248.59 pounds, not quite the maximum size for his breed, but still very heavy. He was warm, too. And he was soft. His fur felt nice to stroke, felt nice for Connor to bury his face into and let himself get lost in the sensation of Sumo’s softness and body heat. As unrelenting as anxious thoughts like the ones he was having were, Sumo always helped. It felt like the only thing having an influence on his physical presence was Sumo, his gigantic head resting on Connor’s chest, compressing it, his large body stretching out beyond Connor’s legs. 

After about eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds of letting Sumo lie on top of him, the persistent, disquieted thoughts Connor had before slowly became less frequent. Not completely gone, but not enough to prevent him from slipping into rest mode again, with Sumo snoring on top of him. 

* * *

It was one of his days off, and Hank got up when, as he liked to put it, when he fucking got up. If he didn’t need to get up before seven in the morning, he wouldn’t. Not because he was hungover, the frequency of such states having decreased since he’d invited Connor to move in anyways. Just because getting up before seven was miserable, and nobody should get up before seven on their days off. 

Getting up at seven-thirty wasn’t much better, but it’s the time Hank found himself awake, and at eight, the time he found himself getting out of bed because he couldn’t go back to sleep. 

On his way to the kitchen to brew himself coffee that would make his morning slightly less miserable, Hank found Connor on the couch, with Sumo’s head on his lap. Connor’s eyes were fixed on the television, some program about sea whale sharks. His hands were busy, too. He was rapidly flicking his quarter back and forth between each hand, making Sumo’s ears perk and swivel occasionally. 

Hank didn’t consider himself a genius. Not by a long shot. 

But he didn’t take up being a detective for his job because he was a complete idiot, either. 

Something was bothering Connor, though Connor hadn’t said anything that would indicate he was stressed. It wasn’t just his LED, flickering from yellow to brief flashes of red. Hank had gotten used to Connor’s facial expressions, and could tell, by now, the differences between expressions most people believed to be neutral. His slight squint, his gritted teeth, his intense focus on the television screen...something that bothering him. And he was thinking about it. He was thinking about it a lot. 

“Footsteps in a straight line right here,” said Hank, his eyes sliding to the floor, “you trying to wear a hole in the carpet, Connor?”

Connor’s LED circled yellow, before Connor answered, not looking at Hank while speaking. 

“The amount of erosion caused by any amount of pacing along a uniform path would be minimal on shag carpeting. This only furthers my question about why people seem to hold generally negative feelings towards shag carpets.”

“People are morons, Connor.” 

Connor tilted his head and furrowed his brow, finally looking at Hank.

“Just because they don’t like shag carpeting?”

“Never mind,” said Hank with a dismissive wave of his hand, “you mind telling me why you’re trying to wear a hole in the floor?”

“As I explained, there is no possible way physical movement could erode--”

“Shag carpeting, yeah, I know. You, Connor. I’m asking about you. Not the carpet.”

Connor’s eyes went back to the television screen. 

Sumo nestled his head more comfortably on Connor’s lap.

“I am perfectly...functional, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Hank when you’re living here, and Hank when you’re addressing a guy who quit the police force a month ago.”

“I am perfectly functional, Hank.”

Hank sighed, irritated from how early it was, how stubborn Connor was being. He saw Connor tense up at that, and he’s expression softened.

“Functional doesn’t mean you’re doing well.”

“It means I’m capable of carrying out my quotidian activities.”

“I coulda fuckin’ looked it up myself if I didn’t know what it meant. Your blinker’s been yellow since before I started talking to you. I’m not good with this personal shit, but...look. I just don’t wanna hear that robotic ‘I’m perfectly functional, Lieutenant’ shit when something is seriously wrong. Got it?”

Connor averted his eyes, looking at the television again. A whale shark slowly swam forwards on screen.

“Got it.”

Connor’s LED flickered to red, briefly, before he answered again. He continued rubbing Sumo’s ears with one hand, and rolled a quarter across his knuckles with the other.

Hank sighed. Out of habit, he reached out and put a hand on Connor’s shoulder. Connor flinched, and Hank heard the sound of synthetic skin retracting over a plastic endoskeleton. They’d hugged a few times, since the revolution, since Connor moved it, but Hank got the impression Connor did it because he felt he _ should _. Not because he enjoyed the physical contact. 

“Sorry. Forgot how that uh...feels to you.”

“It’s fine.”

“You can yell at me to stop next time.”

“I’d prefer going about expressing my physical discomfort in a way that’s not as aggressive.”

“Nothin’ aggressive about telling someone to back off when they’re too close.”

“Expressing emotional closeness doesn’t seem like a reasonable thing to yell at someone for having. It seems...human.”

Connor’s LED flashed red when he said this. It stayed red for a few seconds. Persistent negative thoughts. 

Hank furrowed his brow, and sat down next to where Sumo was sprawled out, on top of Connor. Connor’s hands were now being used to absentmindedly rub Sumo’s ears. The huge dog’s eyes drooped as he began to drool on Connor’s t-shirt, a green one with a fluffy orange and white cartoon puppy on it. Connor continued petting Sumo even as his shirt became slowly more soggy. 

“That what this is about? You thinking you’re not human because you don’t like it when someone tries touching you without a fucking warning? Look, some people are just like that. It doesn’t mean a fucking thing to me. A man’s--uh, well, y’know, whoever--a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“It’s not that.”

“Look,” Hank sighed, again, heavier this time, “if you wanna talk about it, you gotta spell it out for me.”

Connor looked at the television, and focused on a whale shark, opening its wide mouth and filtering plankton out of the water. His LED was yellow, and spinning. Hank knew Connor well enough to know he was thinking about something, and he was thinking about something very deeply. 

“I am beginning to think I do not feel empathetic,” Connor said finally, startling Hank, who’d grown used to the silence. 

“Connor, that’s bullshit.”

“It is not ‘bullshit’. It’s a fact I believe to be true based on my stored audio and video information playback.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hank huffed, “just say memories. You’re talking about memories.”

“Memories are things that humans have,” Connor’s voice faltered, “and I’m not sure how human I am.”

“Okay. Well, your stored audio and video...playback...thing? That should have all the times you’ve looked at someone, anyone, and saw life in them and refused to cause them any harm. That’s not fucking empathy?”

“Yes. Based on what I understand it to be, and based on what you have said. But I do not believe my actions, or myself, to be empathetic. When I see people get upset, Hank, I don’t feel the exact same way as them. I feel...distant, from them, and their emotions. And as a result, they feel difficult to process and respond to. I have only felt the same emotions as someone else while connected to their interface. And I believe, sometimes, that had I not been connected to that android that died, I would have kept watching them die, and felt...”

He trailed off, but Hank knew what he meant. 

Connor sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut. His LED was a solid red, looking the way he did when he was most upset, his head buried in one of his many stuffed animals. 

“Most people don’t know what dying feels like, Connor. Most people don’t know how exactly to respond to it. I sure as shit don’t.”

“Dying and the feelings that accompany death statistically one of the harder feelings to deal with. Feelings like anger, concern, or...anything else, Hank, come more naturally. Most other people feel concerned when someone else is. They feel..._ empathetic. _If I’m not empathetic, then I would question just how much I could be considered a deviant, by any stretch of the word. I would argue not feeling empathetic while knowing what empathy is makes me far more machine then deviant. But due to the thoughts I experience and have experienced outside my programming, I know I cannot consider myself a machine. I don’t know...I don’t know what I am, simulating empathy like this.”

Connor’s eyes were welling up with a protective saline solution (they were tears, and Connor called them a protective saline solution). They were tightly shut as his fists gently balled up in Sumo’s soft fur. Sumo looked up, yawned, and clumsily licked at the android’s face. 

Hank gave it a few minutes. Not sure what to say. Not sure what to do. Connor turned up the television volume, flinching at the loudness.

After a few long moments, Hank sighed and turned the volume down himself.

“First of all, don’t fuckin’ do that to yourself,” said Hank, “that’s never the kinda thing you should do when you’re upset. Second, I’d be pretty hard-pressed to call a guy who blames himself for every fuckin’ thing that happens around him an uncaring machine. You really think all the times you’ve sat around feeling badly about things that weren’t your fault makes you a machine?”

“I...felt that was a part of my adaptive algorithm. Designed to keep me from failing.”

“Sure. Let’s say that was it. You think they’d make it so it got in the way of you getting out of that mountain of stuffed dogs? Or apologize profusely to Sumo every time you startle him and explain to him at length how what you did was an accident, like he can understand a goddamn thing you’re saying? You think if you were a machine with no compassion or feelings whatsoever, the fake feelings would get in the way of your...I don’t fuckin’ know...productivity? Efficiency? Whatever those schmucks at Cyberlife would call it?”

Connor considered it.

And then shook his head.

“Right. A machine wouldn’t care. Not the way people do. And. Look. Lots of human people don’t know a damn thing about how to feel the same way as other people. Lots. Some of ‘em just aren’t good at it, and some of ‘em are like you don’t don’t understand lots of other things. Doesn’t mean they’re not people. They’re just, I dunno, different. They think in another way. And part of that way of thinking is just not feeling the exact same as people around them. And thank fuckin’ god they’re like that, because I don’t need to constantly be fuckin’ surrounded by people trying to feel exactly how I feel. You’re a big fuckin’ relief.”

Connor glanced at Hank, his expression blank. If Hank didn’t know any better, he’d have thought Connor annoyed. At this point, he knew Connor was simply thinking. Processing what he was hearing. Putting what he was hearing together and coming to a conclusion based upon it. His silence lasted a small eternity, wherein Connor sat, thinking, without blinking, without breathing. 

And then he remembered, he remembered, he had to breathe. 

If he didn’t breathe he’d die. 

Connor looked at Hank, finally, wiping one of his eyes with his hand. He didn’t smile—he never really smiled—but he wasn’t frowning. After a few moments, corners of his mouth upturned, slightly. 

“Thank you, Hank. I’d like to...apologize, for inconveniencing you with this.”

“Listen, Connor,” Hank shook his head, “it’s not inconveniencing, okay? Nobody expects anyone with feelings to understand all of ‘em. That’s why people talk about their problems.”

Connor nodded. He finally slid his eyes to Hank’s, looking ashamed and relieved at the same time. 

“It was hardly professional.”

“Professional? Shit, Connor, stop worrying about things like that. You don’t fuckin’ get close to people and then never bring up things that are bothering you. I can’t guarantee I’m gonna know how to solve what you have going on, but I have ears. I can listen, or whatever. Christ. You can be as dumb as you look, sometimes.”

Connor tilted his head.

“I don’t look dumb. My appearance was specifically designed to be easily integratabtle and non threatening.”

“Okay. You got me. I take it back. You look _ and _ sound dumb.”

“I must remind you that my voice falls under the same reasoning as my appearance.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. It’s a joke, for chrissakes. You’re supposed to laugh.”

Connor blinked. 

“Oh. Sorry. Hah.”

“No, not like, if you don’t--never mind.”

Hank sighed and scrubbed his eyes. This only served to confuse Connor more, since his human behavior analytic suggested that Hank was annoyed with the laugh he had given him, immediately after being told he’s supposed to laugh at jokes. 

Ordinarily, that may have made Connor feel a pang of guilt. Mingled shame and terror over not understanding human behavior.

But it seemed even humans didn't completely understand human behavior, or human emotions. 

His lack of an understanding didn't make him feel like a machine. 

Now, it just made him feel...human. 


End file.
